Intel’s CEO Pat Gelsinger has vowed to make Intel the number one company in semiconductor manufacturing, after the global chip shortage saw them cede their lead.
After promising Intel’s next-generation Xeon Scalable processor, codenamed Sapphire Rapids, would appear this year, the company has now delayed this release until the first quarter of 2022.
“Demand for Sapphire Rapids continues to grow as customers learn more about the benefits of the platform,” explained Intel Vice President Lisa Spelman.
“Given the breadth of enhancements in Sapphire Rapids, we are incorporating additional validation time prior to the production release, which will streamline the deployment process for our customers and partners.
“Based on this, we now expect Sapphire Rapids to be in production in the first quarter of 2022, with ramp beginning in the second quarter of 2022.”
Intel shares declined 1.3 per cent to USD$56.75 at the close of New York trading, after this announcement was made.
Sapphire Rapids will be Intel’s highest performance data centre processor, offering up low-latency, high-memory bandwidth across workloads.
“Sapphire Rapids is an exciting release for us and for the industry,” Spelman says.
“The advancements in performance, workload acceleration, memory bandwidth and infrastructure management will lead the industry’s transition to cloud-based architectures and help shape the data centres of the future.”
